Bhutan Governmental Officials Visit Idaho State University and Meet with Political Science Faculty and Students

Five governmental officials from Bhutan visited Idaho State University on Aug. 29 as part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. The group met with faculty and students from the Department of Political Science and discussed political science, politics and public administration in the United States.

During the discussion, the Bhutan officials asked what political science was, what new challenges the U.S. faces that they should tackle in the next five to 10 years and the engagement of academia and policy engagement within the government.

The officials were in the United States for one month learning about government accountability in the United States in order to help with accountability in government in Bhutan. They first visited Washington D.C., and met with different organizations regarding government. Next, they visited Jackson, Mississippi, and learned about how city governments work. Then they traveled to Boise to learn more about the state government, visited Craters of the Moon National Monument, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. and Fort Hall Indian Reservation to learn more about its structure. To round out their trip, they traveled to Portland to learn more about the state level government before making the two-day trip home.

The country of Bhutan became a democracy in 2008, and their visit to the United States had many purposes including examining the United States’ legal and regulatory frameworks for public administration and human resource management, exploring public decision-making and budgeting models and exploring the roles of media, watchdog organizations and citizen groups in supporting and monitoring good governance.